Pulane Kingston, a patron of Africa’s art

Despite its emphasis on progressiveness, the art world can be a closed bubble. It isn’t often that individuals come out of the art space fully empowered, and it’s rarer when they are embraced for their contributions. Pulane Kingston is one such person.

The lawyer-turned-art collector and adviser is blazing her own trail. She completed her LLB at the University of Wales and her Master’s in international law at the University of Nottingham. She works at Webber Wentzel law firm and is a co-founder and chairperson of Sphere Holdings. Her love of art is evident through the many ways in which she shows up in the art world.

Nkgopoleng Moloi spoke to Kingston ahead of a dinner she hosted for Nigerian British artist Yinka Shonibare, who is exhibiting at the FNB Joburg Art Fair.

Its title points to the irony of naming things already named, and ANC in-house seminar of exiled cultural workers in 1989. The debates and discussions that this paper generated, especially for a young woman like me, who was born of South African parents outside the country and who was still shaping her identity and finding her voice and place in the world, had an indelible impact on me.

This foregrounding heavily informed my passion for preserving, revitalising and documenting our culture and heritage in a way that is accessible. Art — contemporary visual art specifically — is the one aspect of our culture that I was most drawn to.

When I returned to South Africa, I was already a young art enthusiast who had spent a significant portion of my free time at university visiting galleries, museums and art institutions, as well as attending diverse cultural events, as a matter of course. This has continued. its form points to the prevailing conditions that allowed this practice to thrive.

Combining projected images from the various rooms that I occupied for the entire time that I pursued my tertiary education. I remember how it reminded me of the majestic beauty of a Makonde carving — regal, smooth, with elegant features.

Over the years, I have acquired a few other pieces of art that I have been instinctively drawn to — aesthetically or from a composition perspective — or, indeed, because of their symbolism or what they represent. With the passage of time, and as I have come to understand the art ecosystem better, I have begun to actively focus on supporting modern and contemporary art that is produced by African female artists and those from the diaspora — what I casually term “gender mainstreaming” in art. overhead projectors, titled Echo, with the audio of plant names emitted from suspended, undraped speakers, the names echo but also demand that

I remain perplexed by the statistics which demonstrate how, as in all other areas of human endeavour, women remain underrepresented, marginalised and excluded, irrespective of their talent and efforts.

It is only through intentionally supporting their work, supporting the publication of scholarly writing about their work, and more, that we can play a part in raising their profiles. I am a member of the advisory board of the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town and serve as a member of the Africa acquisitions committee of the Tate Modern museum in the United Kingdom. I am also excited to be serve on the board of Lalela, which is an NGO that provides arts education to at-risk youth to spark creative thinking and awaken the entrepreneurial spirit. one must get close to a speaker for an intimate acknowledgement of other names.

“One of the first things I wanted to The obvious place to start is at the intellectual level, as people who visit art establishments (which includes artists’ studios) to view and buy artworks and to participate in talks and debates that are held.

Through the interactions and exchanges of ideas, these professionals have the opportunity to educate artists. An engagement with artists may lead to a sharing of advice about how to spend, how to save and how to invest money effectively, as well as in relation to the legalities around their contractual arrangements with galleries or with respect to their wills. This is the second year that I have had the opportunity to be part of the judging panel. Last year, we put in place criteria for selection, which made the shortlisting and final selection process defensible. The lawyer in me needs to work within the confines of set criteria to ensure fairness and objectivity.

We were most impressed by the overall quality of the submissions, and so the criteria once again came

“In a sense, the submissions speak to the fact that contemporary African art really has found a voice that resonates”